Post by kas on Nov 6, 2010 18:40:26 GMT -5
How to Reduce Online Fraud and Avoid Email Scams
Published March 10, 2010 by:
Tony Payne
www.associatedcontent.com/article/2777532/how_to_reduce_online_fraud_and_avoid.html
So many people these days get caught out by Email Scams and other means of Online Fraud, and I have some very useful tips for how to make it harder to get fooled, as well as for reducing Junk Mail etc.
There will always be Internet users who are naive and believe everything that they receive in their inbox is genuine, but many more who ought to know better still fall for the scams and schemes that will supposedly make you rich.
Keep Your Email Address Safe
I have friends who still insist on forwarding junk emails, like the ones that promise you money or good luck if you send them to 10 or more friends, and they just forward these to all of their friends using the "To" option.
Aside from this filling up people's inboxes with a 200k email that would only take up 3k of space if you removed the multiple headers and thousands of email addresses from previous forwards, doing this makes all of those email addresses available for harvesting.
What is "Email Harvesting" you might ask?
Email harvesting is where someone collects email addresses, and uses them to send junk mail, to try and commit fraud, or to send scams or viruses. These addresses can also be sold to companies who but email addresses, resulting in more unsolicited mail being received.
Addresses are usually "harvested" in one of two ways. Firstly, if someone who collects email addresses receives one of these emails that contains thousands of addresses, they can run a program that extracts all the addresses from the email, and then use them. Secondly, if someone has one of these emails in their mail folders and their computer gets infected by a virus, this can do the same, extracting email addresses from their address books, as well as emails, using them to send out copies of the virus, plus also sending the list of addresses to harvesters.
The Correct Way To Forward Emails
If I receive one of these junk emails, I usually delete it, but if I do feel the need to forward it on, instead of sending it to all my friends using the "To" option, or the "CC" (Copy To) option, I send it to myself using the "To" option and then to my friends using the "BCC" option (Blind Copy). By sending an email using "Blind Copy", each recipient only sees the person that the email was sent to (Me) and their own email address. They don't see the dozens of other addresses that the message was sent to.
The other key thing to do if you absolutely have to send one of these emails on, is to remove the email addresses of all the other people that it has been sent to before you, and often also the multiple copies of the email that are embedded with the copy that you received. I have know there to be as many as 10 copies of each picture that was in an original email, which really does take up more space on your computer.
Never Reply To Junk Email
Sometimes we receive emails which are junk, that might have nothing to do with us, or are offering a service, or appear to be aimed at someone else. Should we respond to these? The answer is ABSOLUTELY NOT!
As well as using harvested emails, programs are used to send junk messages to thousands and even millions of addresses, using combinations of characters, in the hope that some actually reach the inbox for a genuine account. By responding to these emails, or by clicking on a link in them to unsubscribe, all you are doing is telling the originator that your email address is in fact a real one and that it is active. Your email address is then added to the list of those that have been harvested. Deceitful isn't it, tricky and nasty!
The best action to take with this type of email is to use the Junk Mail or Spam button in your email program, which will move it to a Junk or Spam folder, or to just delete it. Some programs, such as Thunderbird from Mozilla, have Spam Filters that adapt themselves depending on what you mark as Spam.
Use Multiple Email Addresses
This is a great way to help prevent fraud and to avoid being tricked into thinking that an email from your bank is genuine.
How many people have only one email address and use this for everything, from doing online banking, to signing up with Facebook or MySpace, online shopping sites, and registering with all sorts of web sites and promotions? I would hazard a guess that this is probably around 90% of people that use the Internet.
How many of these people get bombarded with dozens or even hundreds of junk emails daily, including adverts for Viagra, Dating services etc? The percentage here is probably even higher than 90%! Sad isn't it, but there are ways to prevent this from happening, or at least to help reduce the amount of junk mail that you receive.
How many times have you received an email that supposedly comes from your bank, and you have had trouble determining if this is genuine or fake? Most of the time these emails are so poorly worded that it's obvious they are fakes, but once in a while you find ones that look genuine, and it's very hard to know if they are real or not.
There is a wonderful way to deal with this, and it involves using multiple email addresses.
In the simplest of scenarios, I recommend using 4 different email addresses (in reality I actually use a lot more).
The first is for Family and close Friends. These are people that I can hopefully trust, and that with luck and enough kicks up the backside they will not send me junk mail with my name included amongst thousands of others... This email address is hopefully not shared with the whole online world, and so the number of junk or unsolicited emails that I receive are minimal.
The second that I use is for Online Banking and other Financial business. I ONLY use this email address for this purpose, and do not expect to receive any junk emails, or emails that are not from these institutions. If I receive an email from my bank, and it's not sent to the expected email address, then I know it has to be a fake. This alone instantly makes my online banking a lot safer.
The third email address that I use is for Online Shopping. Since you are going to be providing these sites with Credit Card, Paypal details etc, you want to ensure that this is kept safe. I have used a separate address to the one that I use for my Bank Accounts, just to be one step safer, in case I register with a Shopping site that turns out to not be secure.
Finally, I use the fourth email address to register with all other sites. If I do get junk email, it is likely to be with this email address, but since it is not the one that I use for Banking or for emailing my Family and Friends, should it get compromised and I start receiving lots of junk email or viruses, I can just throw it away and create another one.
How Do I Get Multiple Email Addresses?
Most ISP's (Internet Service Providers) require you to register one email address, but also allow you to create additional addresses. You can also register for FREE email addresses at a number of other sites, the best known being Google (Gmail or Googlemail), MSN (Hotmail or Live Mail), and Yahoo.
Another option is to register your own Domain, a topic which is worthy of a whole article on it's own, but well worth the effort and the small cost involved. Without going into a lot of detail, because I want to save this for another article, registering your own Domain helps to prevent losing your email address.
You can lose your address very easily in two ways: firstly by changing your ISP - in which case you have to let your Family, Friends, Bank etc know your new address, and secondly because your address gets closed down.
This can happen, should you be accused of spamming, or your Free address gets hacked. I had this once with AOL, when I sent an email to more than 20 Family and Friends. AOL thought that I was spamming (a red flag goes up if you send to more than a given number of people), and so they suspended my account. A phone call later and I managed to have it re-opened, but as part of their "guilty until proven innocent" policies, when they close an account, they automatically delete all the emails, address books etc. So beware when using Free email services.
I hope you found these tips useful, and YES it is awkward setting up multiple email addresses, but it's also easy to read them if you use a mail reader like Thunderbird from Mozilla, which saves you having to log in to multiple email addresses manually.
If these are handy tips, please don't hesitate to forward a link to this article to your Family and Friends who could use some guidance in email etiquette or email security. They will hopefully thank you for it. Sharing useful advice like this with your Facebook or Twitter contacts is also a good idea to help educate them.
Published March 10, 2010 by:
Tony Payne
www.associatedcontent.com/article/2777532/how_to_reduce_online_fraud_and_avoid.html
So many people these days get caught out by Email Scams and other means of Online Fraud, and I have some very useful tips for how to make it harder to get fooled, as well as for reducing Junk Mail etc.
There will always be Internet users who are naive and believe everything that they receive in their inbox is genuine, but many more who ought to know better still fall for the scams and schemes that will supposedly make you rich.
Keep Your Email Address Safe
I have friends who still insist on forwarding junk emails, like the ones that promise you money or good luck if you send them to 10 or more friends, and they just forward these to all of their friends using the "To" option.
Aside from this filling up people's inboxes with a 200k email that would only take up 3k of space if you removed the multiple headers and thousands of email addresses from previous forwards, doing this makes all of those email addresses available for harvesting.
What is "Email Harvesting" you might ask?
Email harvesting is where someone collects email addresses, and uses them to send junk mail, to try and commit fraud, or to send scams or viruses. These addresses can also be sold to companies who but email addresses, resulting in more unsolicited mail being received.
Addresses are usually "harvested" in one of two ways. Firstly, if someone who collects email addresses receives one of these emails that contains thousands of addresses, they can run a program that extracts all the addresses from the email, and then use them. Secondly, if someone has one of these emails in their mail folders and their computer gets infected by a virus, this can do the same, extracting email addresses from their address books, as well as emails, using them to send out copies of the virus, plus also sending the list of addresses to harvesters.
The Correct Way To Forward Emails
If I receive one of these junk emails, I usually delete it, but if I do feel the need to forward it on, instead of sending it to all my friends using the "To" option, or the "CC" (Copy To) option, I send it to myself using the "To" option and then to my friends using the "BCC" option (Blind Copy). By sending an email using "Blind Copy", each recipient only sees the person that the email was sent to (Me) and their own email address. They don't see the dozens of other addresses that the message was sent to.
The other key thing to do if you absolutely have to send one of these emails on, is to remove the email addresses of all the other people that it has been sent to before you, and often also the multiple copies of the email that are embedded with the copy that you received. I have know there to be as many as 10 copies of each picture that was in an original email, which really does take up more space on your computer.
Never Reply To Junk Email
Sometimes we receive emails which are junk, that might have nothing to do with us, or are offering a service, or appear to be aimed at someone else. Should we respond to these? The answer is ABSOLUTELY NOT!
As well as using harvested emails, programs are used to send junk messages to thousands and even millions of addresses, using combinations of characters, in the hope that some actually reach the inbox for a genuine account. By responding to these emails, or by clicking on a link in them to unsubscribe, all you are doing is telling the originator that your email address is in fact a real one and that it is active. Your email address is then added to the list of those that have been harvested. Deceitful isn't it, tricky and nasty!
The best action to take with this type of email is to use the Junk Mail or Spam button in your email program, which will move it to a Junk or Spam folder, or to just delete it. Some programs, such as Thunderbird from Mozilla, have Spam Filters that adapt themselves depending on what you mark as Spam.
Use Multiple Email Addresses
This is a great way to help prevent fraud and to avoid being tricked into thinking that an email from your bank is genuine.
How many people have only one email address and use this for everything, from doing online banking, to signing up with Facebook or MySpace, online shopping sites, and registering with all sorts of web sites and promotions? I would hazard a guess that this is probably around 90% of people that use the Internet.
How many of these people get bombarded with dozens or even hundreds of junk emails daily, including adverts for Viagra, Dating services etc? The percentage here is probably even higher than 90%! Sad isn't it, but there are ways to prevent this from happening, or at least to help reduce the amount of junk mail that you receive.
How many times have you received an email that supposedly comes from your bank, and you have had trouble determining if this is genuine or fake? Most of the time these emails are so poorly worded that it's obvious they are fakes, but once in a while you find ones that look genuine, and it's very hard to know if they are real or not.
There is a wonderful way to deal with this, and it involves using multiple email addresses.
In the simplest of scenarios, I recommend using 4 different email addresses (in reality I actually use a lot more).
The first is for Family and close Friends. These are people that I can hopefully trust, and that with luck and enough kicks up the backside they will not send me junk mail with my name included amongst thousands of others... This email address is hopefully not shared with the whole online world, and so the number of junk or unsolicited emails that I receive are minimal.
The second that I use is for Online Banking and other Financial business. I ONLY use this email address for this purpose, and do not expect to receive any junk emails, or emails that are not from these institutions. If I receive an email from my bank, and it's not sent to the expected email address, then I know it has to be a fake. This alone instantly makes my online banking a lot safer.
The third email address that I use is for Online Shopping. Since you are going to be providing these sites with Credit Card, Paypal details etc, you want to ensure that this is kept safe. I have used a separate address to the one that I use for my Bank Accounts, just to be one step safer, in case I register with a Shopping site that turns out to not be secure.
Finally, I use the fourth email address to register with all other sites. If I do get junk email, it is likely to be with this email address, but since it is not the one that I use for Banking or for emailing my Family and Friends, should it get compromised and I start receiving lots of junk email or viruses, I can just throw it away and create another one.
How Do I Get Multiple Email Addresses?
Most ISP's (Internet Service Providers) require you to register one email address, but also allow you to create additional addresses. You can also register for FREE email addresses at a number of other sites, the best known being Google (Gmail or Googlemail), MSN (Hotmail or Live Mail), and Yahoo.
Another option is to register your own Domain, a topic which is worthy of a whole article on it's own, but well worth the effort and the small cost involved. Without going into a lot of detail, because I want to save this for another article, registering your own Domain helps to prevent losing your email address.
You can lose your address very easily in two ways: firstly by changing your ISP - in which case you have to let your Family, Friends, Bank etc know your new address, and secondly because your address gets closed down.
This can happen, should you be accused of spamming, or your Free address gets hacked. I had this once with AOL, when I sent an email to more than 20 Family and Friends. AOL thought that I was spamming (a red flag goes up if you send to more than a given number of people), and so they suspended my account. A phone call later and I managed to have it re-opened, but as part of their "guilty until proven innocent" policies, when they close an account, they automatically delete all the emails, address books etc. So beware when using Free email services.
I hope you found these tips useful, and YES it is awkward setting up multiple email addresses, but it's also easy to read them if you use a mail reader like Thunderbird from Mozilla, which saves you having to log in to multiple email addresses manually.
If these are handy tips, please don't hesitate to forward a link to this article to your Family and Friends who could use some guidance in email etiquette or email security. They will hopefully thank you for it. Sharing useful advice like this with your Facebook or Twitter contacts is also a good idea to help educate them.